Roll Reversal
Source: Added Feature from City Paper's Health and Fitness Guide from 6/22/2006, Writer: Marty Levine Pittsburgh offers kinder, gentler form of kayaking If you’ve ever seen video of kayakers dodging rocks in whitewater, rolling and righting themselves, be assured: The kayaking available within city limits is nothing like that. :“You have to really try hard to flip a kayak,” says Rob Walters, program manager for Venture Outdoors, in its third summer of running the Kayak Pittsburgh rental stand on the Allegheny River. More than 4,000 people have already enjoyed the Allegheny’s flat waters, renting one of KP’s wide, straight-bottomed vessels for $14 an hour or joining some of the organized excursions that Kayak Pittsburgh offers. The brochure warns “Beginner instructions not included,” but if you’ve ever survived a bathtub, you can probably master a KP vessel. You won’t flip over — and you’d fall right out of the wide opening if you did — though you can still get wet. “It’s relaxing,” Walters says. “It takes a minimum of time to learn how to do it. It’s such a calm and peaceful perspective. It’s a little bit of an upper-body workout, but being out on the water and seeing the city that way …” Kayak Pittsburgh did well enough last year to open KP North at North Park Lake, adding singles and tandems to the county boathouse there. And along the Allegheny, there are still spots available for KP’s popular Full Moon and Fireworks Paddle cruises this summer. “You get to feel the fireworks on the water, feel the water shake the boat,” Walters says about the latter trips. “There is no better seat in the city.” From KP’s rental stand under the Roberto Clemente Bridge on the North Side, kayakers intent on a good hour’s voyage can head upriver to the back channel behind Washington’s Landing, pause in its becalmed waters, then head back to the dock. That was the plan of the most recent Happy Hour Paddle, a new offering this season: Wednesday-evening excursions conclude with “specially priced drinks and munchies” at one of the establishments circling PNC Park next door. Rich Ferro and Darlene Schiller of Venture Outdoors led the trip, helped by VO’s Marie Fechik. Kayaking seems to attract the most serene of outdoorsy types. Why were they there? “Breaking the routine,” said Lesley Homer, of Bethel Park. “Good weather, something different,” offered her husband, John. Ferro and Schiller advised us not to swing the two-headed paddles too high, and to swivel our upper bodies, using the back and oblique muscles — the side abdominals — rather than our shoulders and arms. I was kindly given a waterproof bag for my pen and notebook. I should have brought a waterproof bag for the bottom half of my pants. We were advised to paddle along the northern bank and point our bows into any wake. Ferro expected more boat traffic, thanks to the ongoing Pirate game, but it never materialized. Instead, this proved to be a leisurely trek, in which there was time enough, and calm, to chat. We remained studiously unenvious of waving jet skiers while being outpaced by floating geese, but that just gave us time to spot the other fauna: a surfacing turtle, and a big dead carp. Schiller spotted an oriole halfway up the river, concluding that it had been drawn by the mulberries in bloom along the shore. Next to the Heinz and Del Monte plants, a large concrete pipe spewed what she said was water from their cooking process. Sometimes you can tell what they’ve been preparing from the smell, she said. Must be cookin’ river today, I concluded. Soon enough, it was time to head back. “I feel like I’m doing just as much work to get back as I did to get there,” said John Homer … though no part of the voyage was strenuous. The buildings and traffic noise were ever-present, and we seemed to be paddling the same trail as the cyclists and joggers on shore. It felt less like an escape into the outdoors than a new way to enjoy city life. Links * www.kayakpittsburgh.org